Summer, 2008

update! RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

 

	Featuring OSU research and scholarship in all disciplines
	To Bees (or not to be) Appreciation: the Office of Technology Transfer Distinguished Lecturers Fresh Faces in the Research Office: Minding the Books Grants & Music for Fun Expanding Horizons Moving Mass Links to Resources

Distinguished Lecturers

 

OSU's two newest Distinguished Professors presented lectures open to the campus this spring. Update is pleased that the professors have agreed to making their material available on-line.

Below are excerpts. The full material is available via downloadable pdf format here and at Recognizing Excellence.

from Let us build a city: literary lives in the United States (pdf)
by Tracy Daugherty , Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing in the Department of English

In institutional life, we often speak of “collegiality,” and we mean various things by that word. As a student of the humanities, I look first to the human subtext of any definition, so for me, in the most basic sense, to be colleagues means to grow old with one another. Next time you’re in a meeting here on campus, headsore from competing agendas, unfocused discussion, and bureaucratic roadblocks, look around the room at the folks next to you and think, “These are the people with whom I am growing old.”

. . . In the volcanic landscapes of the internet, virtual reality, Blackberries, and other interactive technologies, are our traditional notions of novel, poem, and short story still viable? Can the book survive? Is literature still here, in any significant way?

. . . I want to suggest the mystery and power of creating new worlds, which is precisely what poets and storytellers do, and it is what teachers and students embark upon whenever they gather to build a community. Just as a page holds nothing before we mark it with words, a setting, a place, an institution, a town, can be spiritually empty without enormous cooperative and creative effort. “Let us build us a city!” says the Book of Genesis, and the mystery and power behind that simple statement rests in the implication that out of nothing will come—somehow, gloriously—something.

. . . To find the delights in uselessness, the flash of genius in error, the somethings in nothing – that’s why we gather in places like this with only the slightest notion of what might happen, to build communities of thinkers, readers, writers. That’s why we fill empty pages, to risk the mystery and power of creating new worlds, which can explode in every word . . ..

from News from the front: science, conflict, and insight from the interface of biotechnology and society ( pdf of text and slides)
by Steven H. Strauss, Distinguished Professor of Forest Biotechnology in the Department of Forest Science

What I will do is tell you about what it is like to be at the front that I am at — that is, at a place where science and technology meets society and finds a decidedly mixed reception. And perhaps that is putting a positive spin on it. In reality there are many fronts to this larger battle, one of which being where genetic technology [engineering] [GE] meets a society with a growing standard of living and environmental sensibility — and this new sensibility, employed broadly and ideologically, tends to find the new genetic technology unpleasant or, to more than a few, downright repugnant . . I want to try to speak . . . about some of the root causes of this situation, from the view of an ecologically oriented biotechnologist. . .

. . . with GE you engineer the traits based on fundamental knowledge of how genes work to produce them—and you can use any methods or genes that seem useful—not just those from within the species you started with. It’s the basic unity of life that allows this to happen. You can find the genes anywhere and you can make or modify them according to human design and ingenuity . . .

. . . GE can provide engineering solutions based on detailed knowledge of limiting factors and needs. It showed how it could complement breeding by making it possible to go places, important places, that breeding could not go, or could go only very slowly or with great difficulty. It made clear that GE is not like traditional breeding, where many traits are bred for in a way that looks more like craft than science, and where its difficult to make quantum improvements . . . I became converted about the power, and potentially immense good, that might be done with GE . . .

. . . So we have a fundamental disconnect between popular environmentalism, the movement with the money and broad social appeal, and the scientific community.

. . . a marriage of views is indeed literally possible, and celebration of the niches and roles for each, rather than exclusive competition, is achievable . . . we can produce wiser, and greener, bundles for the future . . . . based on traits and systems and scientific analysis of benefit and safety . . . where products with benefits for farmers and the poor are encouraged, not stigmatized based on their mode of development. One where science, not ideology, holds center stage . . ..

Appreciation: the Office of Technology Transfer

 

W hile focusing on grants, too often we take for granted the efforts of the many people who support the success of OSU research. Update is pleased to highlight those behind-the-scenes whose excellence serves us all.

The Office of Technology Transfer is a dedicated team that in the past few years has updated and refreshed services for faculty for disseminating knowledge, including patenting and licensing of innovations. Photo: Office of Technology Transfer: Denis Sather, Mary Foley Phillips, Mitra Kiani, Brian Wall, Jane Gutter, Sarah Mabee.

The following is excerpted from one of the letters that faculty members have sent recently, thanking OTT staff:

Ms. Kiani did all the paperwork while taking a minimum of my time, which I need for teaching, conducting research, and providing service to the department, the college, the university and the profession . . .

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of personal contact in getting things done on time. In this world of mass communication . . . Mitra has succeeded in getting my attention when needed in order to meet deadlines and beat the competition. I am very grateful to Ms. Kiani for her support and I look forward to working with her in the future.

- Jan Frederik Stevens, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy
& Principal Investigator, Linus Pauling Institute

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New in the Research Office

Minding the Books

We are pleased to welcome Shirley Chow as the Research Office Budget Manager. She is charged with overseeing budget and fiscal matters for the Research Office and the centers and institutes it administers.

Chow has had a career rich in experience in accounting, budgeting, and financial analysis. She most recently served as Fiscal Affairs Manager for OSU's Department of Crop and Soil Science, and prior to that she worked in the Extension Administration Business Office. A long-time resident of Corvallis with her husband and two sons, Chow is originally from Hong Kong.

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Grants & Music for Fun

 

Enjoy the OSU Summer Session free noon concerts, Wednesdays on the brick courtyard outside the OSU Bookstore. The popular series is coordinated by Dick Thies, former Associate Dean of the College of Science and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry. Among the performers are various OSU faculty and staff and their spouses, who have other professions as musicians.

Research funding is the subject of a song that Thies sang in a recent Local Folk concert: "Gonna get a grant! Gonna get a grant! Gonna get a grant to be in love We'll philander for philanthropy, Doing what comes naturally Let's get a grant for love! . . . . . .We'll cuddle without a care, In our own endowed chair . . . . . . Your methods drive me mad, I want to fund you so bad And when our passion's sated, We can be evaluated! . . ." -excerpts from Gonna Get a Grant, by Fred Small - link to full song link to 2008 noon concert schedule

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Expanding Horizons

After you are honored as a member of the NAS, what's left to do?

Move on, if you're OSU's recent honoree Jim Carrington, director of the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing. But not for a permanent location change: he has gone on sabbatical at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, through December. Carrington wrote to Update:

"We have several collaborations with Detlef Weigel's group, including analysis of microRNA and other small RNA in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, a relative of leafy vegetables in the mustard family, and its close relative, the weed Arabidopsis lyrata. We are also exploring new methods to explore genomes, epigenomes and expression patterns using ultra-high-throughput sequencing technology. For the non-genomic scientist, that means we are studying how the genes in plants are coordinated, and we are focusing on some mechanisms that were discovered only recently. We are also developing new technology that will allow us to analyze genomes faster and more accurately.

By being here, I am much better able to push these collaborations forward, and to learn many new quantitative and population-level methods that will help us in the future."

see article about Carrington's NAS honor in previous Update

Moving Mass

Moving mountains to obtain funding for a mass spectrometer is one thing. Moving the device is another. Update asked Jason Balderston about the logistics of such a maneuver. As trades maintenance coordinator for the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, he coordinated the recent renovation of the lab of Dave Graham of Oceanography and Ed Brook of Geosciences. "The new spectrometer was flown from England. To get it up to the third-floor window of Burt Hall took about an hour," he said. "Then to lower it from the window height to the floor took the rest of the day! We stacked up timbers and used jacks, lowering it carefully a bit at a time. You don't want to just plunk that thing down!"

The new mass spectrometer will be used to measure noble gases in a variety of materials. David Graham said, "We will initially investigate questions about the dynamics of the Earth's interior and crust, the duration of exposure of materials at the earth's surface, and the flux of interplanetary dust to the earth recorded in deep-sea sediments and ice cores and the associated changes in climate."

The instrument was funded through the Major Research Instrumentation program of the National Science Foundation (Marine Geology & Geophysics within Ocean Sciences), with a grant for $660,000.